SILENT STUMBLING BLOCKS

Today we commemorate the memorial of Saint Teresa of Avila,whose life of prayer enriched the Church during the 16th century counter-reformation.

Her Life

Saint Teresa of Avila was born in the Castilian city of Avila during the year 1515, the third child in a family descended from Jewish merchants who had converted to Christianity during the reign of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Her father Alphonsus had become an ardent Catholic, with a collection of spiritual books of the type his daughter would later compose herself. As a child, Teresa felt captivated by the thought of eternity and the vision of God granted to the saints in heaven. She and her younger brother Rodrigo once attempted to run away from home for the sake of dying as martyrs in a Muslim country, though they soon ran into a relative who sent them back to their mother Beatrice. When Teresa was 14, her mother died, causing the girl a profound grief that prompted her to embrace a deeper devotion to the Virgin Mary as her spiritual mother. Along with this good resolution, however, she also developed immoderate interests in reading popular fiction (consisting, at that time, mostly of medieval tales of knighthood) and caring for her own appearance. Though Teresa's spiritual directors in later life would judge these faults to be relatively minor, they still represented a noticeable loss of her childhood zeal for God. Alphonsus decided his teenage daughter needed a change of environment, and sent her to be educated in a convent of Augustinian nuns. Teresa found their life dull at first, but soon came to some understanding of its spiritual advantages. Illness forced her to leave the convent during her second year. But the influence of her devout uncle Peter, along with her reading of the letters of the monk and Church Father St. Jerome, convinced Teresa that the surest road to salvation lay in forsaking marriage, property, and worldly pleasures completely. Against the will of her father, who wanted her to postpone the decision, she joined the Carmelite Order. Teresa became a professed member of the order at age 20, but soon developed a serious illness that forced her to return home. She experienced severe pain and physical paralysis for two years, and was expected to die when she went into a coma for four days. But she insisted on returning to the Carmelite monastery as soon as she was able, even though she remained in a painful and debilitated state. For the next three years the young nun made remarkable progress in her spiritual life, developing the practice of recalling herself into the presence of God through quiet contemplation. As her health returned, however, Teresa lapsed into a more routine prayer life. While she remained an obedient Carmelite, she would not re-establish this close personal connection to God for almost twenty years. When she was nearly 40, however, Teresa found herself dramatically called back to the practice of contemplative mental prayer. She experienced profound changes within her own soul, and remarkable visions that seemed to come from God. Under the direction of her confessors, Teresa wrote about some of these experiences in an autobiography that she completed in 1565. Teresa had always been accustomed to contemplate Christ's presence within her after receiving him in the sacrament of Holy Communion. Now, however, she understood that the presence she received did not simply fade: God was, in fact, with her always, and had been all along. It was simply a matter of putting herself in his presence, with love and attention – as one could do at any moment. This revolution in her spiritual life enabled Teresa to play a significant role in the renewal of the Church that followed the Council of Trent. She proposed a return of the Carmelites to their original rule of life, a simple and austere form of monasticism, founded on silence and solitude, that had received papal approval in the 12th century and was believed to date back to the Old Testament prophet Elijah. Together with her close collaborator, the priest and writer later canonized as Saint John of the Cross, she founded what is known today as the Order of Discalced Carmelites “discalced,” meaning barefoot, symbolizing the simplicity to which they chose to return the order after a period of corruption. The reform met with fierce opposition, but resulted in the founding of 30 monasteries during her life. Teresa's health failed her for the last time while she was traveling through Salamanca in 1582. She accepted her dramatic final illness as God's chosen means of calling her into his presence forever. “O my Lord, and my spouse, the desired hour is now come,” she stated. “The hour is at last come, wherein I shall pass out of this exile, and my soul shall enjoy in thy company what it hath so earnestly longed for.” St. Teresa of Avila died on Oct. 15, 1582. She was canonized on March 22, 1622, along with three of her greatest contemporaries: St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Francis Xavier, and St. Philip Neri. In 1970, Pope St. Paul VI proclaimed St. Teresa as one of the first two woman Doctors of the Church, along with 14th century Dominican St. Catherine of Siena.

Now on today's readings

Everybody has a conflict, no one on earth is beyond temptation, but why all these conflicts? To understand our Human nature now, we must accept that something has really happened to our nature. Otherwise why do we desire the spiritual, why do we get the feeling that someway somehow we are incomplete?

To understand our human nature now, we must understand Original Sin.

Sirach 40:1
"A hard lot has been created for human beings, a heavy yoke lies on the children of Adam from the day they come out of their mother's womb, till the day they return to the mother of them all."

When God acted on Man by breathing his Spirit into him, Man became a living soul (Genesis 2:7). Thus animated by Freedom's own Self, Humans possess freedom, and is this freedom they should have spread as stewards of all that were created for them. When freedom gave us free will, we fail to realize that he has imprinted his image on us, and seeking more we ended up corrupting our nature and the whole of creation with it.

In the first reading today, St. Paul says God the Father chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world that we should be blameless before him. He also adds that, according to the purpose of his will, he destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ. So through his blood, forgiveness is granted us, and we are pardoned for our Salvation.

Thus as the Last man (Jesus Christ) imprinted his image and likeness on the first man Adam and hence all of humanity, when humanity failed to live according to his image and likeness, he came to give us a new clothes of grace by giving up his life for us on the Cross.

However we are always failing to appropriate the Victory of the Cross. As stewards of creation we continue to lead ourselves and all of creation into bondage of pains and sufferings. Generations come and go, and the same mistakes are endorsed and things become worse.

As the previous generation kills or destroys, the next generation comes to affirm their destruction. They are like as Jesus said to the Pharisees in the gospel, builders of the tombs of the prophets and apostles whom God's Wisdom sent and their fathers killed and persecuted. Look at our environment, our water bodies and the like. We are destroying ourselves and when someone stands up to do something about it, the person is silenced.

The most painful thing is that when Christians chose not to support their fellow Christians for the betterment of the world because they are of different denominations. All these attitudes shows that, like the Pharisees who waiting to completely silence the words of the prophets conceal them in the tombs the built for them or the Lawyers who wanting to conceal knowledge from others lock it door and keep the key without also entering.

Now let us beware that all silent stumbling blocks will have their punishment. As the blood of the innocent Shepherd Abel through to the last Martyr Zechariah son of Barachiah will be required from them, so to the life all the innocent whom we stop from surrendering their life to God by doing the will of God.

Abel means breath, and Zechariah means "Jehovah remembers." So let's remember that the breath God has given us he remembers and will take it from us even if we become silent stumbling blocks.

As we commemorate the memorial of Saint Teresa of Avila who resolved to avoid mediocre life by even resisting to fall for venial sins, let us overcome any thing that will make us silent stumbling blocks.

By Sylvester Amakye-Quayson

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